ANIEL WEBSTER 

y SAMUEL W. McCALL 




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DANIEL WEBSTER 

By SAMUEL W. McCALL 




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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

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1902 



THE LIBKARY dF 
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Two CoPltS RcCE!VEB 

IVIAY. 3 1902 

COPYRI«HT ENTRY 

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COPY B. 






COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY SAMUEL W. MCCALL 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published May, 1902 



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NOTE. 

Daniel Webster graduated at Dart- 
mouth College in the Class of 1801, 
and in September, 1901, the college 
celebrated in an elaborate manner at 
Hanover, N. H., the centennial of that 
event. In compliance with the invita- 
tion of a committee of the trustees of 
the college, Mr. McCall delivered an 
address, — or, as it is termed in the col- 
lege official report, — the " Webster 
Centennial Oration." With the excep- 
tion of some revision and the addition 
of a few sentences, the address is pub- 
lished here as it was prepared for the 
occasion. It was somewhat abridged 
in delivery on account of its length. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

Nearly half a century has elapsed 
since the College gave formal expres- 
sion to its sorrow upon the death of 
Daniel Webster. The life of that great 
statesman had just ended. On this very 
spot Rufus Choate spoke his eulogy. 
Sj^mpathy in a common political cause 
and the attachment of a life-long 
friendship stimulated an almost unri- 
valed gift of eloquence to the produc- 
tion of a masterpiece among orations 
of that nature, a speech of which Mr. 
Everett expressed the opinion that it 
was " as magnificent a eulogium as was 
ever pronounced." It was a time for 
the eulogy of friends, and for the ex- 
pression of a sense of desolateness over 
the departure of so transcendent a 
figure, but it was no time for a just 

1 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

estimate of Webster either as a man or 
a statesman. His career had been too 
great to be comprehended by a near 
view. It demanded that perspective 
without which only a distorted outHne 
of vast objects can be obtained. The 
passion of partisanship was hot and 
sm^ging. Above the deep tones of 
praise arose the sharp clamor of de- 
traction. Across the horizon which 
shut out the near future could be heard 
the beating of the drums which he had 
set throbbing for the Union. The 
chief work of his life was yet to be 
tried in the furnace of civil war. It 
required that most inexorable of all 
tests, — the test of time. 

Transient movements and the mere 
noises of unsubstantial reputations have 
had time to pass into the silence of 
oblivion. A generation that knew him 
not has come upon the scene. We can 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

now see something of the proper and 
ultimate relations of events. "We are 
now able somewhat dispassionately to 
judge. The observance, amid general 
approval, of this unique occasion bears 
its own eloquent tribute. That so many 
who occupy positions of responsibihty 
and distinction, and to whom Webster 
is merely a historical personage, should 
come here to-day, as to a shrine, from 
all parts of the country, fifty years after 
he has disappeared from the view of 
men, is of striking significance. The 
loadstone that draws you is his fame. 
Obviously the stupendous events of 
that half century have not dwarfed him. 
The distance at which most of us dis- 
appear hardly serves to bring out his 
heroic proportions, and we are here to- 
day to do homage to a statesman who 
easily takes rank as the foremost figure 
in our parliamentary history. 

3 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

The task of fully reviewing his ca- 
reer goes far beyond the limits of this 
occasion. I shall endeavor to set be- 
fore you some estimate of him as a 
lawyer, an orator, and a statesman, and 
shall recall to your minds some of the 
great principles of government with 
which he was identified. I shall ask 
you also to look at him for a moment 
in the supreme relation in which he 
stood to his fellow-men ; for back of 
the orator, or statesman, or lawyer 
there stands the essential thing that is 
manifested in them, there stands the 
man. 

And I should fail to perform the 
most obvious duty if I did not refer 
to his relations to the College which 
helped to nurture his genius and to- 
wards which he bore a filial love. 
"When he entered the College more 
than one hundred years ago it had at- 

4 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

tained a considerable degree of pros- 
perity. For a quarter of a century 
after Wheelock planted it in the wil- 
derness it remained the only college in 
northern New England, and the rapid 
settlement of the country about it gave 
it a constituency respectable in num- 
bers and still more respectable in char- 
acter. Webster came from one of the 
frontier families that crowded into this 
region. When the smoke first curled 
from the chimney of his father's log 
cabin in Salisbury, there was, as the 
son has said, " no similar evidence of a 
white man's habitation between it and 
the settlements on the rivers of Can- 
ada." Professor Wendell tells us in 
his scholarly book on American litera- 
ture that Webster was the "son of a 
New Hampshire countryman," and 
again, that " he retained so many traces 
of his far from eminent New Hamp- 

6 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

shire origin " that he was less typical 
of the Boston orators than were some 
other men. It is true that the father 
was a " New Hampshire countryman/' 
and he does not appear to have attained 
any remarkable eminence. But only 
the most cautious inference should be 
drawn from a surface or negative fact 
of that character, in a past necessarily 
covered for the most part with dark- 
ness. A great deal is to-day unknown 
about that sturdy race of men who 
swarmed over our frontiers more than 
a century ago, and especially a great 
deal that was worthy and noble in in- 
dividuals. And it is hardly useful to 
turn to a doubtful past in order to 
learn of a known present, or to judge 
of a son whom we know well from a 
father of whom we know but little. It 
is often more safe to judge of the an- 
cestor from the descendant than of the 

6 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

descendant from the ancestor. I sup- 
posed that Daniel Webster had forever 
settled the essential character of the 
stock from which he sprung, just as 
the pure gold of Lincoln's character 
unerringly points to a mine of unal- 
loyed metal somewhere, if there is any- 
thing in the principles of heredity; and 
whether the mine is known or un- 
known, its gold will pass current even 
at the Boston mint. Perhaps neither 
of these men in himself or in his origin 
was wholly typical of any place, but 
it is enough that they were typical of 
America. 

But what we know of Webster's 
father indicates the origin of some of 
the great qualities of the son. He was 
a man of much native strength of in- 
tellect and of resolute independence of 
character. He was an officer in the 
Eevolutionary army, and, although 

7 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

never trained to the law, was thought 
fit to be appointed to a judicial office 
of considerable importance. He had 
those magnificent physical qualities 
which made the son a source of won- 
der to all who knew him. He had, too, 
a heart which, to use the words of the 
son, " he seemed to have borrowed 
from a lion." "Your face is not so 
black, Daniel," Stark once said, "as 
your father's was with gunpowder at 
the Bennington fight." And on the 
night after the discovery of Arnold's 
treason, at that dark moment when 
even the faithful might be thought 
faithless, and the safety of the new 
nation demanded a sure arm to lean 
upon, it was then, according to the tra- 
dition, that Webster was put in com- 
mand of the guard before the head- 
quarters of his great chief, and George 
Washington, another " countryman," 

8 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

said, " Captain Webster, I believe I 
can trust you^ 

I have alluded to the prosperity 
which the College soon attained on 
account of the rapid settlement of this 
region. During the ten years imme- 
diately preceding the year of Webster's 
graduation it was second among the 
colleges of the country in the number 
of graduates to the degree of Bachelor 
of Arts. But whatever may have been 
its relative rank, the one thing most 
certainly known about it now is that 
it was a small college. The pathetic 
statement of Webster in the argument 
of its cause at the bar of the Supreme 
Court has settled that fact for all time. 
It is true that it was a day of small 
things, but the smallness of contem- 
porary objects was not immortalized by 
the touch of genius, which has it in its 
power to endow with perpetual life any 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

passing condition or mood in the life of 
a man or an institution. Fifty genera- 
tions have grown old and died since 
the Greek artist carved his marble urn, 
but the maiden and her lover chiseled 
there are still young, and to the immor- 
tality conferred by art has been added 
the immortality of poetry in the noble 
verse of Keats : — 



(( 



Forever wilt thou love and she be fair." 



The College has grown wonderfully in 
the century since Webster left her. It 
is our hope that the prosperity of her 
past may be eclipsed by the prosperity 
of her future. But however great she 
may become hereafter, the genius of her 
son has made it impossible to be for- 
gotten that she was once a small college. 
The schooling of Webster before he 
entered college was of a very limited 
character. He appears to have been 

10 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

well drilled in Latin, but he possessed 
only the rudiments of English, and of 
Greek he knew very little. It must 
not be overlooked, however, that even 
at his youthful age he had acquired a 
fondness for the " Spectator " and for 
other good Enghsh books. "While in 
college he broadened his reading of 
Enghsh and history until he was said 
to be at the head of his class in those 
branches. Perhaps his most positive 
acquirement was in the Latin language, 
in which he became a good scholar and 
which he continued to study in after 
life. A profound knowledge of a for- 
eign tongue can hardly be conclusively 
inferred from frequent quotations from 
it. In the oratory of the first half of 
the last century the Latin quotation 
was an established institution, and for 
much of it little more than the manual 
custody of the Latin author was appar- 

11 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

ently necessary. But the drafts upon 
that language which were made in 
"Webster's speeches were apt, and usu- 
ally betrayed an insight into the mean- 
ing of the author, deep enough often to 
get a second or poetical meaning. He 
continued to neglect Greek, probably 
because he had been so miserably pre- 
pared in it, and long afterwards he 
lamented that he had not studied it 
until he could read and understand 
Demosthenes in his own tongue. 

The course of study which he fol- 
lowed was the rigid and unyielding 
course of that day, where every branch 
was impartially prescribed for every- 
body. Mr. Ticknor is authority for 
the statement that the instruction in 
the College was meagre. This appears 
to have been a fault of the times rather 
than a particular fault of the College; 
for a dozen years after Webster's 

12 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

graduation, and in Boston, Mr. Ticknor 
himself succeeded in getting the neces- 
sary books to study German only with 
the greatest difficulty. He discovered 
a text-book in the Boston Athenaeum 
which appears to have been so much of 
a curiosity that it was deposited there by 
John Quincy Adams on going abroad ; 
and then he was forced to send to New 
Hampshire for a dictioiiary. But how- 
ever narrow the course of study com- 
pared with that of the modern college, 
it contained the means of much excel- 
lent discipline, and the years spent in 
its pursuit laid the foundation of a broad 
culture and prepared the way for the 
development of thinkers and scholars. 

The debating society was an insti- 
tution to which Webster was devoted 
and from which he derived great bene- 
fit. It enabled him to overcome his 
timidity, which had been so great at 

13 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

Exeter that it was impossible for him 
to recite his declamations before the 
school, and he became in college a 
ready and self-possessed debater. I do 
not find it easy, however, to detect 
under the flowers of his early rhetoric 
the promise of that weighty and con- 
centrated style which afterwards dis- 
tinguished him. But his college efforts 
were a necessary part of his intellectual 
development. It was better that the 
inborn desire to utter fine words with- 
out meaning should be satisfied in 
youth, when it could be satisfied with 
comparative safety, than that it should 
be restrained at the risk of gratifica- 
tion when he came to perform the sober 
duties of life. Although not the first 
in scholarship, he undoubtedly acquired 
a leadership among his college mates. 
His popularity was the natural result 
of the display of his ability and manly 

14 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

qualities in that most just and perfect 
democracy in the world — a democracy 
of schoolboys. It lingered in the Col- 
lege after he left it; and when he re- 
turned after his graduation with the 
" shekels/' as he expressed it, which 
he had earned for his brother Ezekiel, 
he was received as quite a hero. 

It is difficult to believe, in view of 
the majestic proportions of his later 
years, that he was ever slender and 
delicate ; but he is spoken of as being 
in his college days " long, slender, pale, 
and all eyes." But his shght form 
supported an enormous mass of head, 
with its noble brow crowned by hair 
as black as the wing of a raven. Un- 
doubtedly his wonderful black eyes 
were his most striking feature, those 
eyes which near the end of his life 
Carlyle spoke of as " dull anthracite 
furnaces, needing only to be blown," 

15 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

but which were then lighted up with 
the fire and brilhancy of youth. His 
nature unfolded itself slowly. Far 
from being forward, it required a strong 
effort for him to overcome his bashful- 
ness. He displayed while in college 
the qualities of a large, undeveloped 
nature, and led a careless, happy, and 
somewhat indolent existence. 

There was that in his appearance at 
that early day which arrested attention 
and dispensed with the necessity of the 
ordinary introduction. Soon after leav- 
ing college he entered the law office 
of the accomplished Christopher Gore 
of Boston, presented by one as im- 
known as himself, who could not or 
did not speak his name, — under cir- 
cumstances surely that would not ordi- 
narily secure a hearing, much less em- 
ployment of a confidential character; 
but the attention of the busy lawyer 

16 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

and man of the world was at once 
secured, and Webster was told to go 
to work. His connection with Gore 
proved of great value, not so much 
because it gave him an opportunity to 
study his profession under as favor- 
able conditions probably as then ex- 
isted, but because Gore's advice de- 
terred him from taking a step which 
might have kept him from his great 
career. Webster was offered the clerk- 
ship of a New Hampshire court, with a 
salary which, in his circumstances, was 
a tempting one, and he had no other 
thought than to accept it. Gore clearly 
saw that he was capable of performing 
a far higher part in the world, and he 
doubtless saw, too, the danger that the 
competency which the place offered 
might tempt him from making the 
hard struggle necessary to establish 
himself at the bar. He strongly urged 

17 



DAl^IEL WEBSTER 

"Webster to decline the position, and 
thus rendered him a great service 
in keeping him upon the arduous 
road. 

It was a fortunate circumstance, too, 
in his early career that it fell to his lot 
to meet often in the courts so great 
a lawyer as Jeremiah Mason. When 
Webster came to the Portsmouth bar, 
he found Mason its unquestioned leader. 
Mason was a giant mentally and phy- 
sically, thoroughly trained in his pro- 
fession, with an absolute contempt for 
rhetorical ornament, and a way of talk- 
ing directly at juries in a terse and in- 
formal style which they could compre- 
hend, standing, as Webster expressed 
it, so that he might put his finger on 
the foreman's nose. Long afterwards, 
when Webster's fame as a lawyer and 
statesman extended oyer the whole 
country, he wrote it as his deliberate 

18 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

opinion of Mason that if there was a 
stronger intellect in the country he did 
not know it. From this estimate he 
would not even except John Marshall. 
Webster quickly outstripped his other 
rivals, and for nine years he maintained 
the struggle against this formidable 
antagonist for supremacy at the Ports- 
mouth bar. He was compelled to over- 
come his natural tendency to indolence 
and to make the most careful prepara- 
tion of his cases. The rivalry called 
into play the most strenuous exercise 
of all his faculties. The intellectual 
vigilance and readiness which became 
his marked characteristics in debate 
were especially cultivated. He soon 
saw the futility of florid declamation 
against the simple style of Mason, and 
his own eloquence rapidly passed out 
of the efflorescent stage and became 
direct and full of the Saxon quality, 

19 



DANIEL WEBSTER 






although he never affected little words, 
and would use a strong word of Latin 
origin when it would better answer his 
purpose. When his practice at the 
Portsmouth bar came to an end, he had 
proved his abihty to contend on even 
terms, at least, with Mason, and he had 
developed those great qualities which 
enabled him to take his place as the 
leader of the Boston bar, almost with- 
out a struggle, and to step at an early | 
age into the front rank of the lawyers 
who contended in the Supreme Court 
at "Washington. 

This occasion demands more than a 
passing reference to the cause in which 
"Webster gained a recognized place 
among the leaders of the bar of the na- 
tional Supreme Court, for it possesses 
a double importance to us to-day. It 
marked an epoch in his professional 
career and it vitally concerned the exist- 

20 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

ence of this College. The Dartmouth 
College causes grew out of enactments 
of the ]^ew Hampshire legislature, 
making amendments in the charter 
which differed little from repeal. 
These acts did not spring primarily 
from a desire to improve the charter, 
but were the outgrowth of a division 
in the board of trustees, one of the 
parties endeavoring to secure by legis- 
lation the control which it had lost in 
the board itself. In substance the le- 
gislative acts created a new corporation 
and transferred to it all the property of 
the College. There would have been 
little security in the charters of colleges 
or of similar establishments in this coun- 
try if state legislatures generally had 
possessed the power to pass acts of 
that sweeping character. 

The trustees made a struggle for 
self-preservation against great odds. 

21 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

The dominant political forces in the 
state were hostile ; the legislature was 
against them; and, as it tm-ned out, the 
Supreme Court of the state was against 
them also. The contest was first made 
in the state court, and it is rare that 
there has ever been brought together 
in a trial in any court such an array of 
lawyers as appeared in the little court- 
room at Exeter. Webster appeared for 
the College. He had with him Jere- | 

miah Mason and Jeremiah Smith. 
"Webster and Mason formed a combi- 
nation which could not be surpassed in 
strength by that of any other two law- 
yers at the American bar, while Smith, 
the former chief justice of the state, w^as 
probably its most learned la^^^er. It | 

is no disparagement of the counsel 
against the College to say that they 
were overmatched. They were, how- 
ever, great lawyers, — Sullivan the at- 

22 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

torney-general, and Ichabod Bartlett, a 
hard fighter and an ingenious and elo- 
quent advocate. Both sides were fully 
prepared in the state court, and it may 
well be doubted whether ]N^ew Hamp- 
shire has ever witnessed such another 
intellectual contest as took place at Ex- 
eter over the College charter. "Web- 
ster's speech does not appear in the 
printed report of the proceedings in the 
state court. He was the only one of 
the counsel on either side in the 'New 
Hampshire court who took part at 
"Washington, and he apparently did not 
wish to be reported twice in the same 
cause. But at Exeter he closed for 
his side in a speech of great brilliancy; 
and his " Caesar in the Senate House " 
peroration, which is said to have brought 
tears to the eyes of John Marshall at 
Washington, was spoken in substance 
and with thrilling effect. The decision 

23 



i 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

of the New Hampshire court was 
against the College and disposed of I 

the point which a]3peared to be the 
strongest in its case, that the legisla- 
ture was inherently incapable of passing 
the acts in question, because vested 
rights could not be taken away without 
a judgment which could be rendered 
only by the judiciary. It also settled 
the claim that the statutes in question 
were in contravention of the constitu- 
tion of ]N^ew Hampshire. The simple 
ground of appeal to the federal Su- 
preme Court lay in the contention that 
the College charter was a contract and 
was under the protection of that clause 
of the federal constitution which pro- 
hibited states from passing laws impair- 
ing the obligation of contracts. Web- 
ster did indeed state the whole argu- 
ment before the court at Washington, 
but only for the purpose of illustration, 

24 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

and very likely also for collateral effect 
upon the court. 

The point upon which the court had 
jurisdiction was regarded by the Col- 
lege counsel as a forlorn hope and to be 
more daring and novel than sound. It 
apparently originated with Mason. It 
was, however, the only ground open on 
the appeal, and this was a fortunate cir- 
cumstance for the fame of the cause. 
If the whole cause had been subject to 
review, it might well have been decided 
upon one of the other grounds, and 
thus it would not have become one of 
the great landmarks of constitutional 
law. "Wirt, who was then the attor- 
ney-general of the United States, 
and Holmes appeared at Washington 
against the College, and Hopkinson 
with "Webster in its favor. It must be 
admitted that Webster possessed an 
advantage over the other counsel. He 

25 



I 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

had fought over the ground, when it 
was most stubbornly contested, and knew 
every inch of it. His whole soul was 
in his case. He had the briefs of Mason | 

and Smith as well as his own, and had 
absorbed every point in all the great 
arguments on his side at Exeter. He 
generously gave all the credit to Smith 
and Mason. He was interested in pre- 
venting the printing of the Exeter 
speeches because, he said, it would show 
where he got his plumes. This was un- 
doubtedly too generous, but his debt 
was a heavy one, and no lawyer was 
ever better prepared than Webster was 
when he rose to speak in the College 
cause. He possessed, too, as thorough 
a mastery of his opponents' arguments 
as of his own. With his extraordinary 
power of eloquence thus armed, it is not 
strange that the court was to witness a 
revelation, and that he was destined to 

26 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

a great personal triumph. He took the 
part of junior counsel and opened the 
argument, but when he took his seat 
after five hours of high reason and clear 
statement, kindled with tremendous pas- 
sion and delivered with all the force of 
his wonderful personality, the case had 
been both opened and closed, and no- 
thing remained to be said. The spec- 
tators were astonished and overawed. 
It is not to be wondered at that Mar- 
shall sat enchained and that Story for- 
got to take notes. The counsel against 
the College were far from being so well 
prepared. Webster afterwards wrote 
a letter to Wirt, complimenting him 
upon his argument, and Wirt apparently 
satisfied himself ; but the tremendous 
performance by Webster took his an- 
tagonists by surprise. The personal 
triumph of the latter was complete, and 
it was followed by the triumph of his 

27 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

cause. The argument won over Story, 
who had been counted on by the oppo- 
nents of the College, as the reading of 
it afterwards won over Chancellor Kent, 
who had at first approved the decision 
of the 'New Hampshire court. A ma- 
jority of the court was carried, and car- 
ried probably by the eloquence of the 
advocate; the College was saved, and 
at the same time there was witnessed 
the birth of a great principle of con- 
stitutional law and of a great national 
fame. 

There have been arguments before 
the same high tribunal more discur- 
sively eloquent, more witty, and deliv- 
ered with a greater parade of learning; 
but in the boldness, novelty, and far- 
reaching character of the propositions 
advanced, in the strength with which 
they were maintained, in the judgment 
with which the points of argument were 

28 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

selected, and the skill with which they 
were pressed upon the court, in the nat- 
ural oratorical passion, so consuming 
that for five hours the spectators were 
held spellbound by a discussion of ques- 
tions of law, no greater speech was ever 
made before the Supreme Court. ISTo 
other advocate in that tribunal ever 
equaled what he himself never sur- 
passed. The published report of this 
speech is apparently much condensed 
and contains only the outlines of what 
was said. There is no hint of the beau- 
tiful peroration. Mr. Ticknor says of 
the printed version, that those who heard 
him when the speech was delivered" still 
wonder how such dry bones could ever 
have lived with the power they there 
witnessed and felt." But even the 
printed version is a classic in its severe 
simplicity and beauty. Although this 
was not the first cause argued by Web- 

29 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

ster before the national high court, it 
especially marked the beginning of a 
career which continued for more than a 
third of a century, and stamps him on 
the whole as the most important figure 
who ever appeared at that august bar. 
And here at this first high point in 
his professional career it may be appro- 
priate to take a view of him as an ad- 
vocate and a lawyer. His greater fame 
doubtless was won as a statesman and 
political orator because it was won in a 
broader forum, but to him belongs the 
rare distinction of preeminence both in 
Congress and in the courts. It is some- 
times said that there is an incompati- 
bility in the quahties that make a great 
advocate and a great parliamentary 
orator. Certainly there are instances 
of men who were highly successful in 
one capacity and who failed in the other. 
But such instances will usually be found 

30 






&■ 
>' 



I 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

where eminence was gained in one 
career, and mental habits adjusted to 
its demands before the other began. 
Webster entered upon his double career 
early in life, and his development in 
each branch of it contributed to his 
development in the other. He had 
scarcely become established at the bar 
before he engaged in the public service, 
and he pursued both careers concur- 
rently during the remainder of his life. 
His efforts at the bar made him more 
definite and accurate in the Senate, and 
his experience as a statesman broadened 
him as a lawyer. His quahties became 
equally commanding in both fields. 

He was doubtless excelled in some 
departments of his profession by other 
lawyers : Curtis was more deeply versed 
in the law ; Choate surpassed him, as, 
indeed, he surpassed all others, in the 

constant brilliancy of his advocacy be- 

31 



I 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

fore juries, although Webster made one 
speech to a jury which Choate never 
equaled. But I think it can be said '! 

without exaggeration that, more nearly | 

than any other, Webster filled the large | 

circle of requirements for that high 
place, and that he stands at the head of 
the whole American bar. 

He has often been contrasted with 
William Pinckney; I suppose because 
the latter during the first thirty years 
of the court's history was the most con- 
spicuous figure at its bar. They were 
never fairly measured directly against 
each other. Webster came prominently 
into view just as Pinckney's sun was 
setting. When he argued the Dart- 
mouth College Case he was only thirty- 
six years old and had had barely a 
dozen years of practice, most of it in 
a small ^ew Hampshire town where 
the causes were neither numerous nor 

32 



DAJ^IEL WEBSTER 

important. Although he would not 
suffer by the comparison, it would be 
obviously unfair to take him at this 
comparatively immature period and 
place him by the side of a seasoned 
veteran like Pinckney, who was seven- 
teen years his senior, and who possessed 
the great prestige and development 
which came from having worthily filled 
the most important offices of the gov- 
ernment, and from his great practice 
before the Supreme Court, at the bar 
of which he was the acknowledged 
leader. A fairer comparison would be 
between Pinckney at the summit of his 
fame when he attempted to press for a 
re-argument of the College cause and 
John Marshall turned his " blind eye " 
towards him, and Webster at the same 
age and period of his career, after he 
had argued that long line of important 
constitutional causes, had delivered the 

33 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

Bunker Hill oration and the Reply to 
Hayne, had become known abroad and 
his own country rung with his fame, 
and when he stood the unchallenged 
leader of a far larger, if not a more 
brilliant, bar. Pinckney was a great 
and learned lawyer, a remarkably elo- 
quent orator, and capable of close and 
abstract reasoning. But his style was 
often balanced and artificial, disfigured 
by affectation, and displayed much dif- 
fuse declamation. Its faults as well as 
its merits are strikingly shown in the 
famous argument in the ^ereide case, 
of which John Marshall said in the 
opinion of the coml, " "With a pencil 
dipped in the most vivid colors and 
guided by the hand of a master a 
splendid portrait has been drawn." It 
will appear from the very full report of 
that argument which survives that the 
father of American jurisprudence was 

34 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

hardly so safe a judge of literary color- 
ing as of law. As to Webster's art, if 
as an advocate he can be credited with 
art, it was so concealed that the chief 
justice was not called upon consciously 
to exercise his faculties as a judge of 
coloring. Take Pinckney's greatest 
efforts at the bar, in the Senate, or in 
diplomacy, and compare them with cor- 
responding efforts of Webster, and I 
believe the superiority of the latter will 
be distinctly seen. 

It is sometimes said of Webster that 
he was not learned in the law. But in 
the very best sense of the term he was 
a learned lawyer. If his mind was not 
an encyclopaedia of cases, it was a store- 
house of legal principles. He was not 
the man to make a pedantic parade and 
to obscure the essential point under a 
great mass of quotations from cases. 
He did not have the habit of irrelevant 

35 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

citation, nor did he throw upon the 
court the burden of winnowing a little 
wheat from an enormous quantity of 
chaff. He had the art of condensa- 
tion, and would select the genuine 
points of his case and put them wdth 
unsurpassed simplicity and weight. 
He possessed to a remarkable degree, 
too, the inborn legal sense, without 
which there can be no lawyer. From 
the day when, a mere stripling, he 
graduated from this College, the law 
was his chief study. The necessities 
of his great practice imposed it upon 
him. Usually acting as senior counsel 
in important cases, he had the advan- 
tage of the preparation of learned 
juniors. He was called upon in court 
to display a mastery of his own side 
and to hear and meet all that could be 
said by great lawyers against it. His 
memory was prodigious. The result 

36 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

of it all was that with his great natural 
powers thus disciplined by forty years 
of practice, one would have been will- 
ing to back him, not merely as a parlia- 
mentary Hercules, as Carlyle said, but 
as a legal Hercules, against the whole 
extant world. 

A great part of a lawyer's work is 
ephemeral and perishes with the day 
that brought it forth. Some of the 
miracles which Rufus Choate wrought 
in the courts were a nine days' wonder, 
passed into splendid traditions, and 
were then forgotten. This is due to 
the fact that while there are many 
causes of vast consequence to individ- 
uals, there are comparatively few which 
are of importance to society generally 
or in the development of the law. But 
a great mass of Webster's legal work 
survives, and insures him a permanent 
fame as a lawyer. Take, for instance, 

37 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

the case of Gibbons and Ogden, where 
the State of ^ew York had attempted 
to grant a monopoly of navigation on 
the waters under its jurisdiction. The 
doctrine which Webster contended for 
in that case was sustained by the court. 
In a time when so much is said of 
the evils of granting franchises in the 
public streets, we can appreciate the 
far-reaching importance of a decision 
which at one stroke forever rescued 
our great lakes and harbors and the 
Mississippi and the Ohio from the 
grasp of monopolies and left our inland 
waters open highways for all to navi- 
gate on equal terms. In the formative 
period of our institutions, when their 
limits were explored in the courts and 
established by judicial construction, 
there were great judges besides Mar- 
shall and great lawyers besides Web- 
ster. But Marshall stands in America 

38 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

unapproached as a jurist, just as Web- 
ster stands as an advocate without a 
rival. The former set our constitu- 
tional landmarks and the latter pointed 
out where they should be placed. And 
it is significant of "Webster's primacy 
that in important debates to-day in 
Congress or elsewhere, upon great 
questions of a constitutional character 
or of a political legal character, relating 
to our systems of government and the 
nature and limitations of their powers, 
he is more widely quoted than any 
other lawyer, whether speaking only 
with his own voice or ex cathedra as a 
member of our highest court. 

An important sphere of his profes- 
sional activity would be neglected if I 
did not refer to his strength as an ad- 
vocate before juries. The same simple 
style which enlightened the courts 
made him easily understood by the 

39 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

ordinary juryman. But his oratory 
was less fettered by technical rules and 
was more varied before juries than be- 
fore the courts. Only two of his very 
many speeches to juries are preserved 
in his published works, and each of 
these amply demonstrates his enormous 
capacity in that field. I will refer to 
the speech delivered in the Wliite 
murder case, because it has been pro- 
nounced by eminent lawyers, who are 
accustomed to measure their words, to 
be the greatest argument ever ad- 
dressed to a jury. Certainly it is a 
masterpiece of eloquence. A rich old 
man had been found in his bed mur- 
dered. The murderer had been hired 
by two brothers to do the deed, in the 
hope that one of them might profit 
from the old man's estate. "It was," 
said Webster, " a cool, calculating, 

money-making mm^der," a murder "for 

40 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

hire and salary, not revenge. It was 
the weighing of money against Hf e, the 
counting of so many pieces of silver 
against so many ounces of blood." 
This is the description of the deed : 
" The assassin enters through the win- 
dow already prepared, into an unoccu- 
pied apartment. With noiseless foot 
he paces the lonely hall, half lighted 
by the moon ; he winds up the ascent 
of the stairs and reaches the door of 
the chamber. Of this he moves the 
lock, by soft and continuous pressure, 
till it turns on its hinges without noise ; 
and he enters, and beholds his victim 
before him. The room is uncommonly 
open to the admission of light. The 
face of the innocent sleeper is turned 
from the murderer, and the beams of 
the moon, resting on the gray locks of 
his aged temple, show him where to 
strike. The fatal blow is given ! and 

41 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

the victim passes, without a struggle 
or a motion, from the repose of sleep 
to the repose of death. . . . To finish 
the picture, he explores the wrist for 
the pulse. He feels for it and ascer- 
tains that it beats no longer. It is 
accomplished. The deed is done. He 
retreats, retraces his steps to the win- 
dow, passes out through it as he came 
in, and escapes. He has done the mur- 
der. No eye has seen him, no ear has 
heard him. The secret is his own, and 
it is safe. Ah ! gentlemen, that was a 
dreadful mistake. Such a secret can 
be safe nowhere. The whole creation 
of God has neither nook nor corner 
where the guilty can bestow it and say 
it is safe." And then follows the won- 
derful passage on the power of con- 
science, which is almost as widely 
known as the peroration of the Reply to 
Hayne. It is a striking circumstance 

42 



i 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

that the most powerful part of this 
speech was upon a point where the fact 
was against Webster's position, al- 
though he may not have been aware of 
it. The fact, however, was an unnat- 
ural one, as facts sometimes are. The 
prisoner's counsel had urged that the 
prisoner's motive, in going to a place 
near the scene of the murder at the time 
it was committed, might have been cu- 
riosity, and not that he might aid the 
murderer. " Curiosity," exclaimed 
Webster, "to witness the success of 
the execution of his own plan of mur- 
der! The very walls of a court-house 
ought not to stand, the ploughshare 
should run through the ground it stands 
on, where such an argument could find 
toleration." Rufus Choate, who ap- 
pears to have heard this speech and 
who was also a fine Greek scholar, 
declared it to be in his opinion " a more 

43 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

difficult and higher effort of mind than 
the Oration on the Crown." 

But prominent as "Webster was in 
the courts, his great fame rests upon his 
career as a political orator and a states- 
man. He was first elected to Congress 
in 1812, and from that time until his 
death, forty years afterwards, he was, 
with the exception of a few short inter- 
vals, constantly in the public service. 
He was for a brief period a member of 
the Massachusetts House of Represent- 
atives, for ten years a Representative 
in Congress, nineteen years a Senator, 
and five years Secretary of State. He 
possessed no meteoric qualities to startle 
and attract attention, but his command- 
ing talents were certain of recognition 
the moment they were displayed upon 
a suitable field. Within one month 
from the time he first took his seat in 
the House he made a speech upon the 

44 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

Berlin and Milan decrees, which probed 
deeply into the causes of the war we 
were waging against Great Britain, 
and which the duplicity of Napoleon's 
government had a considerable share 
in bringing about. John Marshall, to 
whom Webster was then a stranger, 
was so deeply impressed with the speech 
that he predicted that Webster would 
become " one of the very first states- 
men in America, if not the very first." 
During his first Congress he easily took 
a place among the very limited number 
of public men of the first rank at Wash- 
ington, and he grew in strength and 
the public esteem until he had no peer 
among living American statesmen. 

The chief source of his success as a 
statesman is found in his transcendent 
power of speech. When his public 
career began, a highly decorated fash- 
ion of oratory, which has been termed 

45 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

the Corinthian style, flourished in this 
country. Our orators were justly con- 
scious of the fact that we had won our 
independence from the greatest power 
in the world and had become a nation. 
Every one was inspired to talk eloquently 
about Liberty, and as a consequence a 
vast number of literary crimes were 
committed in her name. It was an ex- 
cessively oratorical era. Whether the 
thought was great or little, the grand 
manner was imperatively demanded. 
The contemporary accounts of the 
speeches of that time were as highly 
wrought as the speeches themselves, 
and one might infer that orators of the 
grade of Demosthenes existed in every 
considerable village ; although it will be 
observed that they gradually diminished 
in number as the cold art of stenogra- 
phy became more commonly and suc- 
cessfully practised. The simple art of 

46 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

speaking with reference to the exact 
truth was held in contempt, and the art 
of extravagant expression was carefully 
cultivated. It is not difficult to detect 
in this extravagance the influence of Ed- 
mund Burke. He was chiefly respon- 
sible, however, only because he stood 
in a class by himself and could defy 
successful imitation. There is nothing 
more gorgeous in English literature 
than the best of his speeches or essays, 
for his speeches and essays were the 
same sort of composition. His know- 
ledge was varied and prodigious, and 
even his conversation, well compared 
by Moore to a Roman triumph, was 
enriched with the spoils of all learning. 
In depth and intensity of feeling and 
a noble sympathy for the oppressed 
of every race he was surpassed by no 
orator, ancient or modern. He had the 
glowing and exuberant imagination that 

47 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

" Kicks at earth with a disdainful heel 
And beats at Heaven's gates with her bright 
hoofs." 

Imitation of Burke, thus royally en- 
dowed and blazing with indignation at i 
some great public wrong, would easily 
lend itself to extravagance and pro- 
duce the empty form of colossal speech 
without its substance. I think Burke's 
influence can be clearly seen in our 
orators from his own day to the end 
of Charles Sumner's time. A few of 
"Webster's speeches show not merely the 
inspiration due to an appreciative un- 
derstanding of Burke, which was legit- 
imate, and might be wholesome, but 
a somewhat close and dispiriting imi- 
tation of Burke's manner. This is 
true particularly of the much admired 
Plymouth oration, which substituted 
John Adams for the Lord Bathurst of 
Burke's celebrated passage, and ex- 

48 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

torted from that venerable patriot, who 
had come under the spell of the Corm- 
thian era, the declaration that Burke 
could no longer be called the most con- 
summate orator of modern times. But 
it is "Webster's glory that at his best 
he had a style that was all his own, 
simple, massive, and full of grandeur; 
and compared with some of his noble 
passages Burke's sublimity sometimes 
seems as unsubstantial as banks of cloud 
by the side of a granite mountain. 

While Webster was slow in reaching 
his full mental stature, how rapidly his 
style developed and simplicity took the 
place of the flowery exaggeration that 
was then thought to be fine may be 
seen by contrasting passages from two 
of his speeches. In his Fourth of July 
address delivered at Hanover a year 
before his graduation occurs this pas- 
sage : " Fair science, too, holds her 

49 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

gentle empire amongst us, and almost 
innumerable altars are raised to her 
divinity from Brunswick to Florida. 
Yale, Providence, and Harvard now 
grace our land, and Dartmouth, tower- 
ing majestic above the groves which 
encircle her, now inscribes her glory on 
the registers of fame. Oxford and 
Cambridge, those Oriental stars of liter- 
ature, shall now be lost, while the bright 
sun of American science displays his 
broad circumference in uneclipsed ra- 
diance." The other is from a speech 
early in his Congressional career against 
the policy of forcing the growth of 
manufactures, or rearing them, as he 
expressed it, " in hotbeds." " I am 
not anxious to accelerate the approach 
of the period when the great mass of 
American labor shall not find its em- 
ployment in the field; when the young 
men of the country shall be obliged to 

50 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

shut their eyes upon external nature, 
upon the heavens and the earth, and im- 
merse themselves in close and unwhole- 
some workshops; when they shall be 
obliged to shut their ears to the bleat- 
ings of their own flocks upon their own 
hills, and to the voice of the lark that 
cheers them at the plough." The one 
passage is probably little above or below 
the style then prevaihng among school- 
boys ; the other possesses a simple and 
lyric beauty, and might have been writ- 
ten by a master of English prose in its 
golden age. 

In his speech upon the Greek revo- 
lution, delivered while he was still a 
member of the House, his style may be 
said to have become fixed in its sim- 
plicity. Upon such a subject there 
was every temptation to indulge in 
passionate declamation about freedom 
and to make a tremendous display of 

51 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

classical learning, and such a treatment 
seemed to be demanded by the prevail- 
ing taste of the time ; but the generous 
sympathy he held out to the Greeks, 
he extended in a speech of severe and 
restrained beauty, and the greater part 
of his effort was devoted to a profound 
study of the principles of the Holy 
Alliance as a conspiracy against pop- 
ular freedom. Jeremiah Mason pro- 
nounced this speech the best example 
of parliamentary eloquence and states- 
manhke reasoning which our country 
had seen. The Plymouth speech 
greatly extended his reputation as an 
orator and was most impressive in its 
immediate effect. George Ticknor, 
who was disposed to be critical, and 
usually admired with difficulty, some- 
what hysterically wrote in a letter on 
the day of its delivery : " I warn you 
beforehand that I have not the least 

52 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

confidence in my own opinion. His 
manner carried me away completely. 
. . . It seems to me incredible. ... I 
was never so excited by public speak- 
ing before in my life. Three or four 
times I thought my temples would 
burst with the gush of blood." This 
speech was received everywhere with 
the most extravagant praise and may 
fairly be said to have established Web- 
ster's position as the first orator of the 
nation. "While it contains noble pas- 
sages, it sometimes expresses the plati- 
tude of the day in a style that suggests 
the grandiose, and it shows more 
strongly than any other of his impor- 
tant speeches the literary faults of the 
time. The first Bunker Hill speech 
and the eulogy on Adams and Jeffer- 
son are distinctly superior to it. That 
splendid piece of historical fiction, the 
speech which he puts in the mouth of 

53 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

Adams, is an excellent exhibition of his 
ability to reproduce the spirit of a great 
event and endow it with life. It was 
precisely such a speech as the most 
impassioned and strongest advocate of 
the Declaration of Independence might 
have made on the floor of the Conti- 
nental Congress. If Webster's under- 
standing had been less powerful, he 
would have been credited with a very 
great imagination. That faculty, how- 
ever, was strictly subordinated to his 
reason, and instead of producing any- 
thing unusual and fantastic, the crea- 
ture of a disordered rather than a 
creative imagination, he summoned the 
event out of the past, and so invested 
it with its appropriate coloring and 
rational and proper setting, that it 
seemed to be a fact rather than a 
fancy. 

"We shall fall far short of doing jus-^ 

54 



I 



I 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

tice to his power as an orator if we fail 
to take into acconnt his physical en- 
dowments for speaking. There can 
be no doubt about the majesty of his 
personal presence. Business would be 
temporarily suspended when he walked 
down State Street, while people rushed 
to the doors and windows to see him 
pass. To the popular imagination he 
seemed to take up half the street. He 
stood nearly six feet, and seemed taller, 
and he had an enormous measurement 
around the chest. His head was one 
of the largest and noblest ever borne 
upon human shoulders. He had a dark 
complexion, a gunpowder complexion 
it was called, a broad and lofty brow, 
and large black eyes, usually full of 
repose, but in moments of excitement, 
blazing with terrible intensity. One of 
his severest critics, Theodore Parker, 
declared his belief that since Charle- 

55 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

magne there had not been such a grand 
figure in all Christendom. 

It might be suspected that the re- 
ports were somewhat colored by pride 
in such an American product ; but he 
went abroad, and his personality pro- 
duced as deep an impression there as 
at home. Sydney Smith called him " a 
steam engine in trousers" and "a small 
cathedral all by himself." To Carlyle 
he seemed a "magnificent specimen." 

The historian Hallam wrote of him that 
he approached as nearly the ideal of a 
Republican Senator as any man he had 
ever seen, one worthy of Rome. This 
enormous personality was not sluggish, 
but in time of excitement it was full of 
animation and dramatic fire. Jeremiah 
Mason said that in him a great actor 
was lost to the stage. He would rise 
easily to the tragic force required in a 
murder trial and overwhelm the listener 

56 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

by his dramatic description of the deed, 
or he would entertain his college friends 
with a perfect imitation of the manner- 
isms and falsetto tones of President 
Wheelock. He possessed as noble a 
voice as ever broke upon the human 
ear — a voice of great compass, usually 
high and clear, but capable of sinking 
into deep tones that thrilled the listener. 
He made himself heard by nearly fifty 
thousand people at Bunker Hill. AYhat 
Mr. Lodge says may easily be believed, 
that no one ever came into the world so 
physically equipped for speech. 

Undoubtedly his oratorical master- 
piece is the Reply to Hayne. When he 
delivered it he was in his physical and 
intellectual prime. The occasion was 
the most important in our congressional 
history. The time had come when, if 
ever, the doctrine of the supremacy of 
the federal Constitution should be pro- 

57 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

claimed, and the truth impressed upon 
the minds and hearts of the people that 
the United States was not a confeder- 
acy, loosely knit together and continu- 
ing its existence only at the pleasure of 
each one of the sovereign states which 
composed it, but that it was a nation, 
and that its laws, enacted in conformity 
with the Constitution, as declared by 
the Supreme Court, were the supreme 
law of the land. This great argument 
over the meaning of the Constitution 
had begun almost on the day when it 
was put in operation. The states-rights 
school of interpretation found much to 
support it in the construction put upon 
the Constitution by those who had 
borne an important part in framing it. 
It had been steadily growing, and its 
doctrines had reached their full devel- 
opment. The term "sovereign state" 
was a very attractive one to the popu- 

58 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

lar mind and demanded a proper limi- 
tation upon its meaning. Hayne, too, 
spoke for a state which was about to 
attempt to put his theory into practical 
force. That theory had never received 
so captivating a presentation as he gave 
it. The work of formulating the creed 
of union so that it might become a 
popular force and not merely check the 
further advance of the doctrines of nul- 
lification, but put them on the defensive 
and turn them upon a retreat, naturally 
fell to Webster. Calhoun, with his 
great industry, his high personal char- 
acter, and his enormous power of logic, 
was the leading advocate of states- 
rights. Clay did not at that time hap- 
pen to be a member of the Senate. But 
Clay, who was a successful party leader, 
a masterful debater, and an impassioned 
orator, did not possess the legal training 
and the grasp upon principles which the 

59 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

occasion demanded, and orator as he 
was, he did not possess the choice gift 
of uttering the hterature of genuine 
eloquence, of speaking the words that 
should wing their flight to the fireside 
of the farmer and artisan and to the 
study of the scholar, and set their hearts 
on fire for the Union. The occasion 
called for a rare combination of quali- 
ties, for one who was at the same time 
a great lawyer, a great orator, and a 
great statesman. The one man for the 
work was the man to whom it fell. 

"With much that was strong and bril- 
liant in Hayne's speech, there was a 
great deal that was paltry and personal 
and had no place in a great constitu- 
tional argument. There was an ingen- 
ious attempt to set one section of the 
Union against the other. I^ew Eng- 
land was held up to ridicule. Hayne 
imitated Homer's heroes, who began 

60 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

their fights with taunts and boasts. A 
personal attack was made upon Web- 
ster, and he was taunted with fearing 
that Benton might be an overmatch for 
him in debate. I am not sure that this 
did not greatly add to the interest of 
the reply. It introduced the personal, 
human element, and served to call 
"Webster's enormous combative powers 
fully into play. One can imagine this 
Titan with his whole nature aroused, 
thoroughly informed upon his great 
subject, profoundly impressed with the 
justice of his cause, but unhampered 
by any written speech, rising in the 
Senate, and for nearly seven hours 
pouring forth that mighty torrent of 
argument, fact, irony, and eloquence 
found in the reply. To say that the 
speech fully met the occasion is to 
give it the highest possible praise. 
The advantage was with Webster upon 

61 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

every point. When he took his seat, 
he had triumphantly vindicated New 
England, he had crushed his antago- 
nist in the personal controversy, al- 
though with a majestic scorn he had 
barely stooped to engage in it ; and, far 
more important than anything else, he 
had reduced the doctrine of nullification 
to an absurdity, by demonstrating that 
its application would mean the disrup- 
tion of the central government, would 
make the Union a mere " rope of sand," 
and organize governmental chaos into 
a system. In that portion of his speech 
he did as much to create as to expound 
the Constitution, and he held up to the 
country the image of a government 
limited, indeed, in its powers, but in its 
sphere perfect, and beyond the control 
of the state government. Among the 
many ties that bind men together, there 
is no stronger tie than the spirit of 

62 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

nationality. It was to that spirit that 
he so fervently appealed in that splen- 
did piece of rhetoric in the printed 
peroration of the speech, a peroration 
not indeed spoken in all its important 
parts to the few scores of people in the 
Senate chamber, bnt spoken to the mil- 
lions of his countrymen outside of it. 

It was this speech more than any 
other single event, from the adoption 
of the Constitution to the Civil War, 
which compacted the states into a na- 
tion. There were comparatively few 
people in the country able to read and 
to follow public affairs who did not 
read the more important portions of it. 
The leading newspapers published it 
in full. Yast numbers of copies were 
sent out in the form of pamphlets. It 
was declaimed by schoolboys in every 
schoolhouse. It gave the nation a defi- 
nite impulse towards nationality, and 

63 



•^ — ^ 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

it laid down the battle line for those 
splendid armies which fought and tri- 
umphed in the cause of the Union. 

The speech in itself is worthy of the 
tremendous part it has played in his- 
tory. It was unstudied and sponta- 
neous, and it displayed in a sublime 
degree that fusion of reason and pas- 
sion which Macaulay pronounces ne- 
cessary to true eloquence. It is ener- 
getic, direct, simple, weighty in its 
magnificent irony, and it has that ra- 
pidity of movement which is the first 
test of intellectual vigor. It probably 
received less revision than speeches at 
that time usually received, and I be- 
lieve that no great speech of similar 
length which occupies a place near it 
in literature was ever the object of less 
verbal pohshing before and after de- 
livery. It was extemporaneous; and if 

we bear in mind that the art of short- 

64 



DANIEL WEBSTEK 

hand writing was at that time by no 
means perfectly developed, a compari- 
son of the stenographer's report with 
the accepted version shows that the 
form was not greatly changed except 
in a few passages. The printed pero- 
ration has been pronounced by good 
judges, and I think rightly, artificial. 
It is hardly conceivable that after 
speaking more than six hours his ex- 
temporaneous speech should have taken 
that finished and balanced form. That 
there was little of the artificial in the 
spoken peroration is made evident from 
the shorthand report : — 

" While the nation lasts, we have a 
great prospect of prosperity ; and, when 
this Union breaks up, there is nothing 
in prospect for us to look at, but what 
I regard with horror and despair. God 
forbid; yes, sir, God forbid, that I 
should live to see this cord broken ; to 

65 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

behold the state of things which carries 
us back to disunion, calamity, and civil 
war ! When my eyes shall be turned 
for the last time on the meridian sun, 
I hope I may see him shining bright, 
upon my united, free, and happy 
country. I hope I shall not live to see 
his beams falling upon the dispersed 
fragments of the structure of this once 
glorious Union. I hope I may not see 
the flag of my country, with its stars 
separated or obliterated, torn by com- 
motion, smoking with the blood of civil 
war. I hope I may not see the standard 
raised of separate state rights, star 
against star and stripe against stripe; 
but that the flag of the Union may keep 
its stars and its stripes corded and 
bound together in indissoluble ties. I 
hope I shall not see written, as its 
motto, first Liberty, and then Union. 
I hope I shall see no such delusive and 

66 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

deluded motto on the flag of that 
country. I hope to see spread all over 
it, blazoned in letters of light, and 
proudly floating over land and sea, that 
other sentiment, dear to my heart, 
* Union and Liberty, now and forever, 
one and inseparable/ " 

As a piece of composition the printed 
report is doubtless the better one, but 
as the conclusion of a great speech, in 
which a powerful mind under great ex- 
citement sought at the moment its ap- 
propriate form of expression, it seems 
to me the spoken peroration is to be 
preferred. Instead of moving along 
upon symmetrical lines, beautiful and 
majestic, throwing the spray evenly 
upon either side, like a painted ship 
upon a painted ocean, we see him 
rather like a. mighty battleship plun- 
ging madly through the waves, dashing 
the spray above its turrets, with en- 

67 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

gines throbbing irregularly and hard, 
the incarnation of terrible power 
mastering the power of the sea. 

While the Reply to Hayne shows 
"Webster on the whole at his best, some 
of his highest qualities were more con- 
spicuously displayed in other speeches. 
In the debate with Calhoun three years 
afterwards, he "made an argument 
asrainst nullification which was more 
complete and elaborately wi'ought out, 
and which dealt that doctrine a finish- 
ing blow so far as any constitutional 
basis was concerned. But it was se- 
verely argumentative and did not have 
the popular qualities of his first great 
Union speech. His seventh of March 
speech, famous for other reasons than 
its rhetoric, is conversational in tone, 
rising naturally to the heights of elo- 
quence, and in its speaking style it ap- 
pears to me to be the equal of the best 

68 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

of his speeches. It lacked any degree 
of the hard rhetorical form at that time 
deemed necessary to good oratory, and 
which imparted to much of it, compared 
with the more direct modern method, 
the appearance of an unknown tongue. 
The speech on the presidential protest 
is more studied than the Reply to Hayne, 
and in it his imagination mounts on an 
easy wing in the celebrated passage on 
the military greatness of England. If 
any of the orators of that nation has 
ever given a nobler picture of her power, 
I do not know where it can be found : 
'' On this question of principle, while 
actual suffering was yet afar off, they 
raised their flag against a power, to 
which, for purposes of foreign conquest 
and subjugation, Rome, in the height 
of her glory, is not to be compared ; a 
power which has dotted over the sur- 
face of the whole globe with her posses- 

69 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

sions and military posts, whose morning 
drum-beat, following the sun and keep- 
ing company with the hours, circles the 
earth with one continuous and unbroken 
strain of the martial airs of Eng- 
land." 

What is the relative position of "Web- 
ster among the great orators of the 
world ? All would not agree upon his 
exact place, although all would doubt- 
less place him very high among them. 
The two preeminent orators of ancient 
times must, I think, be left out of the 
account. There is httle more common 
ground for a comparison between Web- 
ster and Demosthenes than there would 
be for a comparison between a speech 
of Webster and a book of Homer. 
What common standard can be set up 
between the Greek who spoke to a 
fickle and marvelously ingenious people, 
whose verdict when he obtained it would 

70 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

often only be written on water, and 
"Webster, speaking in a different 
tongue, to an altogether different peo- 
ple, and shaping in their minds the prin- 
ciples of practical government to endure 
for generations? How many English- 
speaking people know enough Greek to 
understand a speech of Demosthenes 
as they would one spoken in their own 
language ? Those who do not cannot 
form an exact judgment, and the few, 
if any, who do, are prone to find virtues 
in particles and, like Shakespeare's crit- 
ics, to bring to view in the text things 
of which the orator was abjectly igno- 
rant. A great deal has been swept away 
in the twenty centuries since Cicero and 
Demosthenes spoke, and it is easy to 
praise those orators too little or too 
much. Separated from us by the bar- 
riers of distance, of language, and of 
race, the most that can safely be ven- 

71 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

tured is that in literary form they prob- 
ably surpassed any of the moderns. 

The orators with whom Webster can 
most profitably be compared are those 
who employed the same language and 
spoke to the same race. Surely it is 
not a narrow field. It is a race that 
has practiced the art of government by 
speaking for centuries, and has far out- 
stripped any other people of ancient or 
modern times in the development of the 
parliamentary system. The result of 
that system has been to produce ora- 
tory which is not simjDly literature nor 
merely spectacular, but which at its 
best is especially adapted to the practi- 
cal purpose of influencing the judgment 
of those who listen upon some momen- 
tous public question. Where, as is the 
case among the English-speaking peo- 
ples, the fate of a government or an ad- 
ministration often turns upon the result 

72 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

of a single debate, where again the ver- 
dict of the parhamentary body is hable 
to be set aside by the people who are 
the sources of political power and be- 
fore whom the discussion must be ulti- 
mately carried, there is a field for the 
development of oratory such as has 
never existed in any other race. Among 
the orators of his own country there 
may be individuals who in some particu- 
lars surpass him, although no one of 
them in the sum of all the attributes 
of the orator can fairly be placed by 
his side. Everett carried the elaborate 
oratory at that time in vogue to a 
greater perfection of finish and form. 
Webster does not show the surprises 
and fehcities to be found in the style 
of Choate, who is as rapid, pure, and 
winding as a mountain stream, and who 
in brilliancy of imagination easily out- 
ranks all other American orators. The 

73 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

only Englishmen who stand in a class 
with Webster are Burke, the most phi- 
losophic of orators and statesmen, and 
Fox, who of all the characters of his- 
tory is one of the most easily loved. 
In comparing Webster with them, it 
must be borne in mind that his most im- 
portant speeches were made in constru- 
ing the terms of a written constitution 
which, however beneficial it may be to 
individual liberty, is not a nurse of 
political eloquence. It imposes rigid 
artificial limits, and, to the extent that 
it requires statesmen to be the expound- 
ers of written political scriptures rather 
than of broad natural principles, it 
hampers the freedom of the mind. 

Rogers said that he never heard any- 
thing equal to Fox's speeches in reply, 
and Burke with generous enthusiasm 
called him the most brilliant debater the 

world ever saw. That was Webster's 

74 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

characteristic quality. He was pre- 
eminently a debater. He did not have 
Fox's celerity, but he possessed far 
greater weight. Fox would lay down 
a proposition and repeat it again and 
again. He was often stormy in manner 
and would sometimes magnify trifles. 
His vehemence was so great that one 
occasionally suspects him of diverting 
attention from the weakness of an argu- 
ment. But he had no affectations. He 
was animated by noble ideas of politi- 
cal freedom, which comprehended not 
merely his own race or neighborhood, 
but embraced the peoples of distant 
lands ; and, regardless of literary form, 
he would press those ideas home and 
strike by the most direct lines at the 
judgment of the listener. There was 
little quickness or mere dexterity about 
"Webster, but it seemed impossible to 
impose upon his understanding, and his 

75 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

great guns would open upon the weak 
points of his adversary, however art- 
fully covered up. 'No man could excel 
him in the power to destroy utterly the 
sham structures of sophistry. He 
would never set up a man of straw, but 
would resolutely grapple with his oppo- 
nent's argument in its full force. His 
vigilance was extraordinary, and when 
surprised, as he sometimes was in run- 
ning debate, it is not difficult to detect 
in his tone the martial note, as he rushes 
upon and captures the threatening posi- 
tion by a display of force simply por- 
tentous. It is not easy to compare 
"Webster and Fox in the immediate 
effect produced by their speeches, but 
there can be no doubt that the person- 
ality of the former was more impres- 
sive ; and if we are to trust at all to 
the contemporary accounts, it is entirely 
safe to say that Fox never surpassed, if 

76 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

indeed he ever equaled, the tremendous 
effect produced by Webster in his 
greatest efforts. Between the speeches 
of the two men there can be no com- 
parison in point of substance and Ut- 
erary form. Fox's speeches certainly 
contain one characteristic that he 
claimed was essential to good speeches, 
they do not read well. It is not diffi- 
cult to see in the best of them the evi- 
dence of his brilliant talents, but they 
do not strongly impress one with weight 
of matter or with the literary quality. 
In the half dozen large volumes of 
Webster's speeches which have been 
collected together, there is doubtless 
a great deal that is prosy. An orator 
who speaks often, and always makes an 
eloquent speech, is usually one who will 
never make a great one. Only on ex- 
ceptional occasions was Webster thor- 
oughly aroused. But those volumes 

77 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

contain a mine of information and of 
reason for political students ; they con- 
tain much literature of the first rank, 
and I doubt that in all of them a sen- 
tence can be found that is flippant, or 
petty, or mean. 

I have already spoken of Burke. He 
is, I think, superior to Webster as a 
jDolitical philosopher, and also in breadth 
of information and imaginative power, 
but in the excellence of the great mass 
of oratorical work which he left behind 
him he does not much surpass Webster, 
if at all. He presents more gorgeous 
passages, but even his most glittering 
fabrics do not imply the intellectual 
strength shown in the simple solidity 
of Webster. But if it be admitted that 
he precedes Webster in the permanent 
value of his speeches, in their tempo- 
rary effect I do not think he can be 
classed with him. He often shot over 

78 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

the heads of his audience, and some of 
his most famous speeches emptied the 
House of Commons. It was said of him 
that he always seemed to be in a passion. 
Webster never permitted himself to be 
in a frenzy, fine or otherwise. On the 
whole, I think it safe to say that "Web- 
ster is not surpassed by Burke, and if he 
is equaled by any other English-speak- 
ing orator he is equaled by Burke alone. 
But whether or not Webster was the 
foremost of all men in power of speech, 
he deserves a place among the half 
dozen greatest orators of the world. 
To take rank in that chosen circle is 
indeed glory. For the transcendently 
great orator, who has kindled his own 
time and nation to action, and who also 
speaks to foreign nations and distant 
ages, must divide with great poets the 
affectionate homage of mankind. While 
the stirring history of the Greek people 

79 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

and its noble literature shall continue 
to have charm and interest for men, 
the wonderfully chiseled periods of 
Demosthenes and the simple yet lofty 
speech of Pericles will be no less im- 
mortal than the odes of Pindar or the 
tragedies of Sophocles or ^schylus. 
The light that glows upon the pages of 
Virgil shines with no brighter radiance 
than that seen in those glorious speeches 
with which Cicero moved that imperial 
race that dominated the world. The 
glowing oratory of Edmund Burke will 
live until sensibility to beauty and the 
generous love of liberty shall die. And 
I believe the words of "Webster, nobly 
voicing the possibilities of a mighty na- 
tion as yet only dimly conscious of its 
destiny, will continue to roll upon the 
ears of men while the nation he helped 
to fashion shall endure, or indeed while 
government founded upon popular f ree- 

80 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

dom shall remain an instrument of civ- 
ilization. 

It is sometimes said of "Webster that 
as a statesman he was not creative and 
that no conspicuous legislative acts 
are identified with his name ; that he 
was the unrivaled advocate of policies, 
but not their originator. It must be 
remembered that during most of his 
congressional career his party was in 
a minority and he had only a limited 
opportunity to fashion political legis- 
lation. He did not, it is true, pass any 
considerable portion of his time in draw- 
ing bills, embodying more or less fan- 
ciful theories of government. But he 
displayed in a prominent degree the 
qualities of statesmanship most loudly 
called for by his time. He was highly 
successful in adapting to the needs of a 
nation the provisions of a written con- 
stitution, by applying to its construction 

81 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

the soundest principles of government. 
It was beyond human foresight for the 
framers of the Constitution to compre- 
hend the unknown demands of the fu- 
ture. The apph cation of that frame of 
government to new needs and condi- 
tions demanded as high and as original 
an order of statesmanship as was re- 
quired in the first instance to write it. 
It might easily have supported a greatly 
different structure of government if it 
had been less wisely expounded. If 
our highest court has been able to re- 
cognize supposed national exigencies 
and apply contradictory judicial con- 
structions to the same clause of the 
Constitution, we can easily see that it 
might indeed be a flexible instrument 
in the hands of statesmen whose prime 
function is political and not judicial. 
But there was no paltry expediency in 
Webster's expounding. His recogni- 

82 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

tion of sound principles, his profound 
sympathy with the genius of our system, 
and his true pohtical sense enabled him 
to display the most difficult art of 
statesmanship, the practical application 
of theory to the government of a nation. 
The principles of government are de- 
rived from a long series of experiments, 
and the statesman who produces some- 
thing novel produces something which 
experience will usually show it is well 
to avoid. Originality of statesmanship 
does not alone consist in bringing forth 
something unheard of in government, 
or in keeping on hand, as Sieyes was 
said to have done, a large assortment 
of constitutions ready made. ISTeither 
can I see originality or even a high or- 
der of statesmanship in patching up a 
truce by some temporary device, which, 
after it shall have lost its effect, will 
leave the body pohtic in a worse condi- 

83 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

tion than when it found it. Webster 
aided in making the Constitution work 
among conditions that its founders did 
not foresee. He contributed to pro- 
tect it from danger, against which they 
made no provision, and to endow it with 
perpetuity. His adherence to sound 
principles vfas as resolute as his recog- 
nition of them was instinctive. He 
would not be swerved from them by 
considerations of temporary expedi- 
ency. This unbending quality and an 
indisposition to appeal to a pseudo-pa- 
triotism prevented him in the conditions 
then existing from becoming a great 
party leader, and in that respect he 
strikingly resembled Fox. After a ca- 
reer unexampled among statesmen, in 
its constant treatment of liberty as a 
birthright of all men, and not as a pe- 
culiar prerogative of Englishmen, it was 
said of Fox's following in Parliament 

84 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

that they could all be put in a hackney 
coach. The reason is obvious. The 
British Parliament has usually been 
jealous for British freedom; but when 
British demands come in conflict with 
the freedom of foreign peoples, liberty 
then becomes a much less influential 
sentiment than what on such occasions 
is sometimes conveniently termed hu- 
manity and sometimes civilization. 

Let us follow Webster's course upon 
some of the more important issues of 
his time, in order to gain a practical in- 
sight into his statesmanship. He was 
a friend of commerce, which, he de- 
clared, had paid the price of independ- 
ence, and he was in favor of encour- 
aging it both with foreign nations and 
among the states themselves. He was, 
therefore, strenuously opposed to the 
embargo which preceded and attended 
the war with Great Britain. He was 

85 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

6o hostile to the war itself that he re- 
fused to vote supplies to carry it on. 
Even that much quoted passage, so 
frequently employed against those who 
would question proposed aggressions 
upon other peoples, " Our party divi- 
sions, acrimonious as they are, cease at 
the water's edge," was uttered by him 
in a speech against a bill to encourage 
enlistment. He was opposed to the 
war because he thought it inexpedient 
and wrong. The question of peace or 
war he declared was " not to be com- 
pressed into the compass that would fit 
a small litigation." It was a great 
question of right and expediency. 
" Considerations which go back to the 
origin of our institutions and other 
considerations which look forward to 
our hopeful progress in future times, 
all belong, in their just proportions and 
graduations, to a question in the deter- 

86 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

mination of which the happiness of the 
present and of future generations may 
be so much concerned. Utterly as- 
tonished at the declaration of war, I 
have been surprised at nothing since. 
Unless all history deceived me, I saw 
how it would be prosecuted when I 
saw how it was begun. There is in 
the nature of things an unchangeable 
relation between rash counsels and 
feeble execution." The struggle itself, 
whether just or unjust at its inception, 
became almost a war of self-preserva- 
tion, and Webster's attitude was an 
extreme one in refusing to vote the 
necessary means to carry it on. At a 
much later period of his life he voted 
for supplies for the war with Mexico, 
to which he had also been opposed. 
But his position was unassailable when 
during the war with Great Britain he 
declined to be badgered out of the 

87 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

right of public discussion, for he did 
not escape the fury of the small pa- 
triots of his time. " It is," he said, " a 
home-bred right, a fireside privilege. 
. . . It is not to be drawn in contro- 
versy. . . . Belonging to private life 
as a right, it belongs to public life as 
a duty. . . . This high constitutional 
privilege I shall defend and exercise 
vrithin this House and w^ithout this 
House, and in all places, in time of 
peace, in time of war." 

His earlier speeches in Congress on 
the tariff were upon free trade lines 
and against the exercise of the taxing 
power of the Constitution for the pur- 
pose of protection. During his term 
of service in the House he voted 
against tariff bills that were protective 
in their nature, but after he became a 
member of the Senate he voted for 
such bills, and he has often been ac- 

88 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

cused of inconsistency on account of 
these apparently contradictory votes. 
But his answer was simple and appar- 
ently conclusive. He had opposed the 
policy of artificially calling manufac- 
tures into being, but it had been 
adopted. 'New England had acqui- 
esced in a system which had been 
forced upon her against the votes of 
her representatives. Manufactures had 
been built up, and he would not vote to 
strike them down. 

During the early years of his service 
in the House he began his advocacy 
of a sound money system, and he con- 
tinued to support it, while the currency 
was an issue, to the end of his career. 
The delusive arguments in favor of a 
money which the art of printing made 
cheap of production did not impose 
upon him. No man of his time set 
forth more clearly the principles of a 

89 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

sound system of finance or the disaster 
.which would follow a deviation from it. 
He had been so conspicuous in the 
debates upon financial measures that 
President Harrison requested him to 
accept the Secretaryship of the Trea- 
sury at the time he became Secretary 
of State. 

He was too firm a friend of civil 
justice not to make an indignant pro- 
test against the bill proposing to take 
the trial of certain cases of treason 
from the courts and give them to mili- 
tary tribunals. 

The Force Bill of 1833, which gave 
Jackson the authority to cope with the 
nullification movement in South Caro- 
lina, would probably have failed of 
passage without Webster's support. 
That measure, however, became of 
little consequence after the substantial 
concession to that State made in the 

90 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

tariff propositions brought forward by 
Mr. Clay, who was usually ready to 
apply temporary devices to any threat- 
ening situation. Webster austerely 
declined to surrender to the threats of 
South Carolina, and voted against the 
tariff bill. 

He jealously upheld the prerogatives 
of the Senate, and resolutely severed 
the growing friendship between him- 
self and Jackson, when the latter 
showed a disposition towards personal 
government and an autocratic admin- 
istration of the laws. But first of all 
he was attached to the principles of 
popular government, and while a Sena- 
tor he favored a broad construction of 
the power which the Constitution gave 
to the Representatives to originate 
revenue bills. In a running debate in 
the Senate he took the position that 
territories were not a part of the 

91 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

United States, within the meaning of 
the Constitution, and he referred for 
authority to a class of decisions of the 
Supreme Court. It so happened that 
the court had decided but a single case 
of the class he mentioned, and that he 
himself had been of counsel. It showed 
his remarkable memory and command 
of his resources that thirty years after- 
wards he was able, apparently upon 
the spur of the moment, to urge in all 
its force the argument he had prepared 
in the law case. The court, however, 
although it had decided the case in his 
favor, had not put its decision upon 
the ground he urged. In the same 
debate in the Senate he made it clear, 
whatever he may have meant in claim- 
ing that the Constitution did not ex- 
tend to the territories, that the oath of 
members of Congress bound them to 
observe its limitations even when legis- 

92 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

lating for the territories, which is an 
essential point in the great controversy 
in which he has recently been so often 
cited as an authority. 

So far from admitting that a denial 
of congressional absolutism in dealing 
with human rights anywhere would 
make our government an incomplete or 
crippled government, he saw in tenden- 
cies of an opposite character the danger 
that our Constitution would be converted 
" into a deformed monster," into a great 
" frame of. unequal government," and 
" into a curse rather than a blessing." 
He also gave weighty expression to the 
opinion that while arbitrary govern- 
ments could govern distant possessions 
by different laws and different systems, 
we could do no such thing. He pro- 
tested against the policy of admitting 
new and small states into the Union, be- 
cause of its tendency to destroy the 

93 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

balance established by the Constitution 
and convert the Senate into an oligar- 
chy, a policy which has been pursued 
until at last states having less than a 
sixth of the population of the country 
elect a majority of the entire Senate. 
He took a leading part in the codifica- 
tion of the criminal laws of the nation 
and in the enlargement of its judicial 
system. He profoundly deplored the 
existence of slavery, and many striking 
utterances against it may be found in 
his speeches ; but he held to the opinion, 
which indeed appears to have prevailed 
everywhere at that time, that the na- 
tional government had no authority 
under the Constitution to interfere with 
slavery in the states where it was estab- 
lished. He believed that the non-po- 
litical offices of the government should 
not be used as j)arty spoils ; and a gen- 
eration before civil service reform made 

94 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

its appearance on this continent, he gave 
himinous expression to its most essen- 
tial principles. His public career was 
singularly free from demagoguery, and 
his speeches will be explored in vain 
for catch-penny appeals to the passing 
popular fancy. 

One of the most notable achievements 
of his career, as well as one of the most 
definite and honorable triumphs of 
American diplomacy, is found in the 
negotiation of the Webster- Ashburton 
treaty. The dispute over the north- 
eastern boundary had for years been a 
source of irritation between this coun- 
try and Great Britain, and had baffled 
such earnest attempts at solution that it 
promised to continue a menace to the 
peace of the two nations. It had defied 
the good ofi^ces of arbitration. It was 
complicated with domestic difficulties, 
and the American negotiations had been 

95 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

hampered by the rights of one of the 
states of the Union. The British gov- 
ernment had finally dispatched a large 
number of soldiers to Canada, and our 
minister at London expressed the opin- 
ion that war appeared inevitable. There 
were also other annoying sources of 
dispute aside from that relating to the 
boundary. "Webster triumphantly over- 
came all obstacles, and he could proudly 
appeal, as he subsequently did in the 
Senate, " to the public men of the age 
whether, in 1842, and in the city of 
"Washington, something was not done 
for the suppression of crime, for the 
true exposition of the principles of pub- 
lic law, for the freedom and security of 
commerce on the ocean, and for the 
peace of the world." 

The qualities which he displayed in 
these negotiations attracted attention 
in the British Parliament. Macaulay 

96 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

commented on his " firm, resolute, vigi- 
lant, and unyielding " manner. Diplo- 
matic writing has a pecuHar rhetoric, a 
rhetoric which Webster had the good 
sense to refuse to adopt in preference 
to his own. Compared with his con- 
densed and weighty letter upon im- 
pressment, for instance, the ordinary 
fawning or threatening diplomatic per- 
formance seems a flimsy structure in- 
deed. The claim, on the part of the 
British government, of the right to im- 
press British-born sailors from the 
decks of American ships could not sur- 
vive the conclusive arguments which 
he . crowded into the brief letter to 
Ashburton, and which without any 
pretense led to the conclusion that " the 
American government then is prepared 
to say that the practice of impressing 
seamen from American vessels cannot 
be hereafter allowed to take place." 

97 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

And then he ran up the flag, not for 
rhetorical purposes, but over the soHd 
foundation of reason, from which it can 
never be hauled down without over- 
turning established principles : " In 
every regularly documented American 
vessel the crew who navigate it will 
find their protection in the flag that is 
over them." No one could mistake the 
meaning of what was so simply stated 
after its justice had been so conclusively 
shown. It is impossible for an Ameri- 
can to read the diplomatic correspond- 
ence of "Webster while Secretary of 
State and not feel a new pride in his 
country. The absolute absence of any- 
thing petty or meretricious, the simple 
dignity and the sublime and conscious 
power, cause one to feel that it enno- 
bled the nation to have such a defender. 
It may be said, too, that the manner in 
which he conducted the State Depart- 

98 



DANIEL WEBSTEK 

ment proved that he possessed the high- 
est quahties of executive statesmanship. 
But the overshadowing work of his 
pubUe life is to be found in the part he 
performed in maintaining the suprem- 
acy of the laws of the national govern- 
ment enacted in conformity with the 
Constitution. In the great controversy 
over the relations between the central 
and state governments, which began 
soon after the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion and continued until it was removed 
from the forum of debate to be settled 
by the arbitrament of arms, Webster 
was the colossal figure. From the high 
ground he took in the Reply to Hayne 
he never wavered. If he erred at all in 
his devotion to the national idea, it was 
in the sacrifices he was willing to make 
for it. Twenty years after his first 
great discussion upon the Union, he 
made a speech on that subject which 
LofC. 99 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

excited fiercer controversy than has ever 
been kmdled by any other utterance of 
an American statesman. I refer to the 
speech which, whatever it might be ap- 
propriately called from its theme, will 
probably always retain the name of the 
Seventh of March Speech. It gave 
rise to more criticism, to employ no 
harsher term, than grew out of all the 
rest of his public career. The aliena- 
tion which it occasioned from many of 
his former friends, who were grieved to 
the heart and regarded him after the 
seventh of March as a fallen archangel, 
the relentless abuse it drew forth from 
others who had never been his friends, 
embittered the last days of his life. A 
half century after it was spoken we 
should be able to hear something of 
those permanent voices which are 
drowned in the fleeting tumult of the 
times, but which speak to after ages. 

100 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

I do not agree that that speech must be 
passed by in silence out of regard for 
Webster's fame. Twenty years ago 
the poet Whittier made noble repara- 
tion for " Ichabod" in the " Lost Occa- 
sion," and even more ample reparation 
would be his due if in judging him one 
applied the same tests that are appar- 
ently applied to his critics. 

When he replied to Hayne, the 
danger to the Union was chiefly theo- 
retical, except for the attitude of a 
single State, but on the 7th of March 
the controversy had become more 
angry and practical. Only a few 
weeks before he spoke, an anti-slavery 
society, most respectable in numbers 
and the character of its members, had 
met in his own State, and in Faneuil 
Hall, and had resolved that they were 
the enemies of the Constitution and 
Union and proclaimed their purpose to 

101 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

" live and labor for a dissolution of the 
present Union." These resolutions 
were but the echo of what had come 
from a similar society in the State of 
Ohio. They emanated not from the 
home of nullification doctrines, but 
from that portion of the country where 
the hopes of the Union lay. There 
was an equally uncompromising and a 
more resentful feeling upon the other 
side of the slavery questions, and a 
convention had been called at the city 
of Nashville to give it voice. That 
convention subsequently put forth an 
address in favor of disunion. The an- 
nexation of Texas, the war with Mex- 
ico and the treaty of peace had pro- 
duced practical and pressing questions, 
and Webster had come reluctantly to 
believe that their solution, without de- 
triment to the Union, was most dif- 
ficult in the inflamed condition of the 

102 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

public mind. More than a year after 
he made the speech he declared that 
" in a very alarming crisis " he felt it 
his " duty to come out." " If," he 
said at that time, "I had seen the 
stake, if I had heard the fagots al- 
ready crackling, by the blessing of 
Almighty God, I would have gone on 
and discharged the duty which I 
thought my country called upon me to 
perform." 

That a similar opinion of the impor- 
tance of the crisis was entertained by 
those two great men whose names 
stand perhaps next to his own and for- 
ever to be associated with it in our 
congressional annals, there can be no 
doubt. There is something pathetic 
in the spectacle of those three states- 
men, then almost at the end of their 
careers, who had often radically dif- 
fered with each other upon public 

103 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

questions, bending their energies to 
the support of a common cause and 
struggling to avert a common danger. 
Clay put forth a last effort of his 
statesmansliip and brought forward his 
compromise measure. For the mo- 
ment he forgot his differences with 
"Webster and earnestly besought the 
latter for his support. Calhoun, too 
weak to utter his own words, spoke 
through the mouth of another, in his 
last speech in the Senate, his sense of 
the gravity of the crisis. 

It was said, and has been so often 
repeated that it is accepted in some 
quarters as an article of political faith, 
that Webster made his speech as a bid 
for the presidency. The imputation 
of an unworthy motive to a public man 
is easy to make and difficult to dis- 
prove. But on this point it is perti- 
nent to remember that he threw away 

104 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

his fairest chance for the presidency 
by patriotically refusing, at the dic- 
tates of his own party in his own State 
and of its leaders in the country, to re- 
tire from Tyler's cabinet until our dif- 
ferences with Great Britain should be 
composed; that he had many times re- 
signed or refused to accept important 
public office ; that the great position of 
Senator from Massachusetts had more 
than once to be forced upon him, and 
that, before the 7th of March at least, 
he had fully lived up to his own im- 
pressive declaration that solicitations 
for high public office were " inconsist- 
ent with personal dignity and deroga- 
tory to the character of the institutions 
of the country." Solicitude for the 
Union was no new thing with him, 
that an ignoble motive should be as- 
cribed. But it was not the first time, 
as it doubtless will not be the last, 

105 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

when those having in view the accom- 
plishment of some great public object 
to the exclusion of everything else, 
have imputed evil motives to those 
who have not sanctioned their particu- 
lar course of procedure, especially 
when they threatened to pull down the 
pillars of the state itself, if thereby the 
evil might be destroyed in the common 
calamity. Reform draws to itself not 
only the single-minded who have no 
sordid aims, but it is attractive also to 
those censorious spirits who delight 
not so much in battering down the 
ramparts of wrong as in abusing those 
hapless individuals who will not agree 
that evil methods are to be sanctified 
by noble ends. In the speeches of 
some of the leaders of the anti-slavery 
movement, denunciation of slavery had 
the second place and denunciation of 
"Webster the first; and when the time 

106 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

of consummation came, even Lincoln 
did not escape their acrimony. 

The high moral purpose and the in- 
dispensable practical value of the aboli- 
tion movement cannot be questioned. 
But it also cannot be questioned that a 
good deal of the agitation was disrup- 
tive, and, in the conditions then exist- 
ing, tended less towards freedom than 
to disunion and war. They might have 
broken the " compact with hell," which 
was the favorite epithet of some of its 
supporters for the Constitution of their 
country, but it is not easy to see how 
this programme could have broken a 
single chain, with a free and a slave 
republic side by side and hostile to 
each other. In the light of to-day it 
can be clearly seen that to accomplish 
freedom the concurrence of other 
forces was demanded. The truth will 
often ultimately spring from apparently 

107 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

contradictory forces. Agitation was 
necessary to educate and arouse the 
people, but it needed also to be checked 
before it should become swollen be- 
yond constitutional limits and form the 
basis of a revolution; for with any 
important body of opinion at the 
]S^orth cooperating with disunion at the 
South, the nation would have been 
rent asunder. 

But look a little more closely at the 
matter. I presume no one would now 
criticise the willingness of Webster, as 
the foremost advocate of constitutional 
supremacy, to accord to the South 
whatever it had a right according to 
the terms of the Constitution to de- 
mand. The specific thing in the speech 
criticised, with the nearest approach to 
justice, was the position with regard 
to ^ew Mexico. He declared that 
natural law had effectively banished 

108 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

slavery from that territory, because of 
its sterile and mountainous character, 
and that he would not vote uselessly 
to reenact the will of God and banish 
slavery by a statute. He therefore 
accepted that feature of Clay's com- 
promise with the declaration that he 
would favor the application of the so- 
called Wilmot proviso to any territory 
in which there was any danger that 
slavery might be established. This 
was certainly a technical if not a prac- 
tical concession to the Southern de- 
mands. For accepting this policy with 
regard to New Mexico, he was accused 
by Mr. Seward, who undoubtedly spoke 
the sentiments of the Free Soil leaders, 
with having "derided the proviso of 
freedom, the principle of the ordinance 
of 1787." 

Ten years later, when it did not re- 
quire a statesman's eye to see the dan- 

109 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

ger, nor a statesman's ear to hear the 
thunders of the approaching storm, 
Congress consented to apply the very 
principle which Webster was wilhng to 
concede to New Mexico, to the whole 
of that vast domain out of which the 
Dakotas and Nevada and Colorado have 
since been carved; and neither Seward 
nor Sumner, nor any other leader in 
Congress of the great new anti-slavery 
party, was heard to raise his voice or 
vote against it. Surely, if Webster 
was a traitor to the cause of freedom, 
they must keep him company. If he 
was a traitor, their guilt was not less 
deep than his, for they were the special 
guardians of freedom while he was 
only the champion of the Union; and 
the scornful repeal by the South of 
the settlement of 1850 shed a brighter 
light for them than was given to him, 
upon the futihty of all compromise. 

110 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

The truth is, none of them was a traitor. 
They were true-hearted, patriotic men, 
sohcitous for the preservation of the 
Repubhc which they loved. But when 
the most responsible of Webster's ac- 
cusers saw the danger, as he saw it, they 
were willing to make concessions to 
slavery far more hateful than any of 
which he had ever dreamed. 

What I have just said bears chiefly 
upon his motive. It is of far less 
consequence whether, using his judg- 
ment unselfishly and honestly, he made 
a mistake. But upon this point we 
may learn something from the event. 
In the gi'eat conflict of arms in which 
the debate finally culminated, it was 
the sentiment of Union that banded 
those invincible armies together, and 
it was through the triumph of that sen- 
timent that we enjoy the blessings of 
a restored government and that the 

111 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

slave secured his freedom. And had 
that great statesman on the 7th of 
March shown any less anxiety for the 
Union, had that great centripetal force 
become centrifugal or weakened in the 
attraction which it exerted to hold the 
states in their orbits, who shall say that 
our magnificent and now united domain 
might not be covered by two hostile 
flags, one of which would float over a 
republic founded upon slavery ! 

And then there is that ill-omened 
thing which, wherever else it may be 
found, is sure to attend greatness. The 
baleful goddess of Detraction sits ever 
at the elbow of Fame unsweetening 
what is written upon the record. 
"Whether it springs from the em^ of 
rivals or from the tendency in human 
nature to identify the material of great- 
ness with common clay, it is true, as 
Burke says, that obloquy is an essential 

112 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

ingredient in the composition of all true 
glory. This proof of greatness, such 
as it is, exists in ample measure in the 
history of Webster. No man since 
"Washington has had more of it. The 
pity of it all is that when an unsup- 
ported charge is disproved, people will 
shake their heads and say it is very 
unfortunate that it should have been 
necessary to establish innocence, as if 
reproof belonged rather to the inno- 
cent victim than to the author of the 
calumny. 

I have alluded to the Seventh of 
March Speech, which has been ac- 
counted one of his crimes. One other 
matter I shall notice, because it bears 
upon a point which has often been con- 
ceded to be the weak place in his char- 
acter. It so happens that in this case 
a slander was tested and the evidence 
upon it carefully marshaled before a 

113 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

congressional investigating committee. 
He was charged in Congress with a 
misuse of the Secret Service Fimd 
while Secretary of State. A resolution 
of inquiry upon the subject was pre- 
sented in the Senate while he was a 
member of that body. He opposed it. 
Kather a singular course, it might be 
said, for an innocent man to take. It 
would ordinarily be regarded as an evi- 
dence of guilt. It might also show an 
extraordinary degree of public virtue 
and indicate one of the rare men to 
whom the interests of their country 
were dearer than their own, even than 
their own reputations. TThat it imphed 
in this instance may be inferred from 
the event. 

A law had been framed evidently on 
the theory that in conducting the gov- 
ernment it would sometimes be neces- 
sary to employ secret agents for confi- 

114 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

dential purposes, and a fund was created 
to be expended upon the sole responsi- 
bility of the President. A publication 
of the special disbursements would 
violate the spirit of the law, and, to say 
nothing of the bad faith with reference 
to the past, might cripple the govern- 
ment in its future operations. Webster 
declared in the Senate that every dollar 
had been spent for a proper public pur- 
pose, but that he could not wish to see 
an important principle and law violated 
for any personal convenience to himself. 
The Senate refused to make the inquiry. 
The author of the charges, writhing 
under the lashing which Webster had 
administered to him in a speech in the 
Senate, again pressed them in the House, 
and a committee of investigation was 
appointed. That committee was politi- 
cally hostile to Webster and was created 

with a view to his impeachment, if the 

115 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

charges were sustained. It made a 
thorough investigation, and it appeared, 
as the outcome of it all, that Webster 
had not indeed displayed the highest 
skill as an accountant, but it appeared 
also that he himself had advanced the 
amount of certain lost vouchers out of 
his own pocket. The report concluded 
that there was no proof " to impeach 
Mr. Webster's integrity or the pmity 
of his motives in the discharge of the 
duties of his office." And that report, 
exonerating the defender of the Union, 
will not lose weight from the fact that 
it bears the name of Jefferson Davis. 

It is true that his friends contributed 
considerable sums of money to his sup- 
port, and he was severely criticised for 
accepting such assistance. Burke re- 
ceived from his friends during his life 
gifts, or loans that were never repaid, 
to an enormous amount for those days. 

116 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

Fox's friends gave him an annuity of 
fifteen thousand dollars. I do not 
know that it has occurred to any one 
to accuse either of them of impro- 
priety. Can it be doubted that "Web- 
ster's friends were as much attached 
to him, or that they gave from pure 
personal loyalty mingled with a patri- 
otic desire to maintain in the service 
of their country talents as splendid 
as ever Fox or Burke possessed, and 
that were even more successfully em- 
ployed ? It is to be regretted from the 
abuse to which his example may give 
rise that he found it necessary to re- 
ceive this aid. The danger is that a far 
lesser man than "Webster in a high pub- 
lic place might receive a more calculat- 
ing homage. However, each case must 
be judged on its own merits. It is very 
true that he was not a bookkeeper. 
But if accounts had been carefully kept, 

117 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

it may be doubted whether even from 
the money standpoint he did not give 
more than he received. Instead of neg- 
lecting his profession and eking out his 
expenses by the aid of friends, he might 
have remained out of the pubUc service 
and enjoyed the most lucrative practice 
at the American bar. His father and 
his brother made great sacrifices to edu- 
cate him, but it must also not be forgot- 
ten that he taught school, and at the 
same time copied two large volumes of 
deeds at night and generously gave the 
proceeds of it all to his brother ; and 
that he assumed and paid his father's 
debts. He certainly was not a man 
" who much receives but nothing gives." 
He had a regal nature and men would 
give him their all because he was as free 
and generous as he was receptive. 

There is a strong light thrown upon 
this trait of his character by an inci- 

118 



DAJSFIEL WEBSTER 

dent which among great speeches and 
public policies may seem an unimport- 
ant incident, and yet, as showing the 
real character of the man, is a great 
one. A young man who had been em- 
ployed by him in connection with his 
farms in the West came to Washing- 
ton, where he fell ill. Webster was 
at that time nearly sixty years old, at 
the summit of his fame and engrossed 
in his public duties. But he saw this 
farmer's boy sick in the city among 
strangers. He took care of him with 
his own hands. For a week he was 
with him almost constantly day and 
night. 

Critics have applied to this generous 
nature the little standards for httle 
men. They have told us that he ought 
not to have been extravagant; that he 
did not closely calculate his expenses; 
that he did not carefully keep his ac- 

119 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

counts; and as they would arraign a 
petty criminal before a police court, 
they have harried this transcendent fig- 
ure at history's bar. They demanded 
too much of Nature. If she had tried 
to do more for him upon whom she 
had lavished so many gifts, she might 
indeed have made him a great clerk or 
bookkeeper, but she might also have 
spoiled him as a statesman. Careless 
he may have been, but anything like 
conscious corruption was utterly alien 
to his nature. 

And now, having spoken to you, I 
fear much too long, of those things in 
his career which I thought best suited 
for bringing out my idea of him, let us 
look back at him for a moment before 
we leave him. "We have seen him the 
greatest lawyer of his time and one of 
the greatest orators of all times. We 
have seen him, too, the resolute and 

120 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

masterful statesman, not swayed by 
trifles, but aiming to govern according 
to far-sighted policies a nation domi- 
nated by immortal principles and of 
chief consequence to itself or mankind 
only as it faithfully adhered to them; 
a statesman who shed a white light far 
across the future pathway of his own 
country, and who illuminated, also, the 
courses of self-governing nations, 
wherever they might exist. He never 
outgrew the simple loves of his youth. 
At Marshfield it was his habit to rise 
before daybreak to watch the coming 
of the dawn. It was said that his 
cattle knew him, and, even more than 
his open hospitality, his herds of fine 
oxen kept him poor. It was one of his 
pleasures to feed them with ears of 
corn out of his own hand, and only a 
few days before he died he had some 
of the noblest of them brought before 

121 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

his window that he might get comfort 
from looking out upon their broad 
brows and their great mild eyes. The 
passion for fishing never left him. He 
delighted to wade in some brook for 
trout, but of all things he loved to go 
out in a little sMff upon the sea. 
" Marshfield and the sea, the sea," he 
would cry when the burdens of politi- 
cal life grew heavy upon him. The 
farmers about his home loved him, and 
it so happened that they gathered to- 
gether from miles around and went out 
in a great procession to meet him when 
he returned to Marshfield the last sum- 
mer of his life. Those who knew him 
best, his family and his near friends, 
were devoted to him. What he was 
as a statesman and an orator, he was 
as a man. 

To the College which, now well into 
the second century of her life, still has 

122 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

upon her the freshness of the morn- 
ing, those early years of struggle, no 
less narrow and straitened for her than 
for him, take on an air of romance. 
No other part of his career seems 
to me so much to be reverenced as 
when that matchless youth in all the 
innocence and perfection of nature, 
with those infinite possibilities in his 
soul, received here the first of the 
lessons which taught him how to use 
his superb gifts for the benefit of man- 
kind. The campus hedged with elms, 
yonder venerable hall, these encircling 
hills, whether clad with the green of 
springtime or, as now, flaming with the 
gold of autumn, became a part of his 
life and all speak to us of him. Men 
die, but the College is immortal. A 
hundred classes have followed him and 
himdreds more I doubt not will yet 
prolong the line. Her sons will con- 

123 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

tinue to bear their part where the in- 
tellectual strife is the fiercest and 
where shape is given to the destinies 
of their times. But whatever the fu- 
ture may bring to the College, how- 
ever she may hereafter "teem with 
new prodigies," she will always 
proudly cherish and, as the succeeding 
centuries roll around, -will reverently 
commemorate, the fame of Daniel 
Webster. Massive even upon the he- 
roic stage of history, easily seen across 
its vast distances, and untroubled by 
its cold and searching light, it would 
be difficult, among all its towering 
forms of statesmen, to find a more vital 
or a more majestic figure. 



124 



Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton &* Co. 
Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 



MAY 3 - 



MAY " 3 1902 



1 COPY DEL. rocAT.riv. 
MAY 3 1902 



l<t' 




